Chapter 2
CHAPTER TWO
DINNER AT LUCAS LODGE
O ne week later, I saw Mr Darcy again.
We were invited to Lucas Lodge for dinner, as was half the neighbourhood, the purpose being to welcome Mr Bingley and his guests back to Hertfordshire after a hiatus in which we began to believe he would never open the house again.
The young gentleman and his party had left Hertfordshire last year, and though we expected him to return for some time, he failed to do so, and we heard nary another word of him. However, months had passed, and it was now late summer, and there had been a suspicious death in Devil’s Acre, one of the rookeries near Westminster Abbey. The mere whisper of the word cholera was enough to spook the haut ton out of the city, and apparently, Mr Bingley suddenly remembered he had a refuge in the country in which the air was still quite pure.
Thus, they came back to the neighbourhood, heads held high as though they had never abandoned us without a proper goodbye directly after the ball of last November. Ah well. Such is the privilege of those who can afford to do just as they pleased.
Miss Caroline Bingley had aged ever so slightly. Likely, the hopeless wait for an offer of marriage from Mr Darcy had ground her down, for in truth, she looked a bit tired.
She was, however, the same individual she had been when we first met.
“Miss Eliza,” she drawled at me.
“Miss Bingley,” I replied pleasantly.
She then moved on while speaking in a coarse whisper to her sister, Mrs Hurst. “So brown!” she said with a wrinkling of her nose.
Had I not been in company, I might have laughed aloud, for we had judged each other equally and both came up wanting. She was not wrong. I had been out in the sun a great deal since early spring. But when I thought of Jane, I enjoyed a touch of vindication. In comparing her to Mr Bingley’s sister, my own sister had grown both wiser and more beautiful with the passage of so many months.
Apparently, I was not the only person in the room thinking of Jane.
“Where is Miss Bennet? I was hoping to see her again.” Mr Bingley had addressed my mother who, God bless her, artlessly twisted the knife when she replied.
“Jane? She has been in London.”
“In London! Has she?”
“She has been visiting relations there since December of last year. I am surprised you never saw her, for she visited Miss Bingley, I believe. But never mind. At present, she is in Brighton for the sea bathing. My brother and his wife have taken their family out of the city as an impulse of caution. My youngest daughter is there too, mind, and from what Mrs Gardiner writes, my daughters never want for partners at the assemblies, and they are swarmed by young gentlemen everywhere they go.”
With a sunny smile frozen on his face, Mr Bingley mumbled, “Ah. Excellent, um, I am glad to hear it.”
It may have been beginning to dawn upon the young gentleman that ours may have been a sleepy hamlet, but much had changed in Meryton since he had gone away. We did not, like the Bavarian princess, simply go into hibernation only to awaken upon the generosity of his arrival.
Even, or perhaps most especially, Longbourn had undergone a fundamental change, for without Lydia, Kitty had been forced to rely upon Mary for companionship. And along with Maria Lucas, who missed her sister Charlotte dreadfully after she married our cousin, the three of them had formed an unlikely cabal.
My sober middle sister had not only found a role as that of the elder voice of reason, but for lack of anything better to do, she had also been harassed into cooperating with their sillier schemes. The exertion of trying to harness two impulsive girls into more serious pursuits had worked amazingly in reverse on Mary, and her constant association with their grossly adolescent notions had lightened her mind most helpfully.
I could only smile when Maria came forwards, looped her arm around Mary’s waist, and led her to the centre of the room to marvel over a painted table. This was their new passion—this embellishment of every single free surface. The decorative arts had become all the rage, or so they had heard, and proficiency in this vein must surely draw to them the most soulful of marriageable prospects, for what man of proper feeling, of sensibility and delicacy, could not love a woman with artistic tastes?
Of the three, Mary was not so much interested in marrying a dreamy poet as she was in mastering a skill. Such was her nature that whatever she undertook was done with immense resolution, and in consequence, our side table at home now had a border of tiny golden leaves and red berries. Mama’s dressing table mirror was festooned with fat cabbage roses, and the walnut case where we kept the silver had been entirely covered over with a woodland scene complete with a fox and a squirrel that, Papa had remarked, could reasonably be mistaken for a cat and a dog in the strong light of day.
This criticism had earned him howls of outrage that chased him from the room, but it had also spurred Mary onward. She haunted the lending library and travelling book merchant in search of referential illustrations and had even sent to London to procure a manual of etchings which detailed common designs, including those of woodland animals. She had practised drawing and brushwork with religious zeal, and her latest table, which had been a collaboration with Maria and Kitty, was actually quite pretty. It sat at Lucas Lodge in a place of honour, and the vase of late summer roses placed upon it set off the design handsomely.
My attention, drawn away from the happy scene of my sisters engaged in enchanted whispers, was soon caught by our host who was addressing my mother.
“Where is Bennet?” Sir William asked whilst rocking back and forth on his heels. “I had hoped to see him today.”
“His gout is troubling him,” Mama explained. “He did not even come out of his room this morning, and as we were leaving, Hill said he was sitting with his foot elevated on a stool and had at his elbow a pot of strong tea. ”
“Oh? I am sorry to hear it,” he replied joyfully.
The unnatural hopefulness in his expression of concern prompted a retort which I was forced to swallow. Do not plan just yet for Charlotte ’ s term as mistress of Longbourn, I longed to say aloud.
The thought of making such a blunt announcement was too tempting, and lest I burst into a random chuckle as I imagined Sir William’s response to what I also wished to say—that my father had ‘gout’ whenever he did not want to suffer his neighbour’s hospitality—I went towards the window and took a chair angled into the room but set apart from the group of matrons crowded around Lady Lucas as they admired her newly painted table.
Mr Darcy, who had been seated next to Mr Hurst in stony silence throughout the gathering of our mundane little neighbourhood, suddenly stood and stalked across the room. I had thought he meant to speak to me and braced myself for a tangle, but alas, he stepped past me, and with his hands clasped behind his back, he stared out the window.
If there was ever a posture which could shout ponderous and long-suffering disapproval, Mr Darcy could strike it with remarkable potency. I was in the midst of forming some sort of provoking remark to poke him out of his brooding silence, such as I am sure your gardens at Pemberley are not half so lovely as those behind Lucas Lodge. Or perhaps I would dare to refer to our escapade of the preceding week by remarking, I do hope your leader is not going lame, sir. He seemed to flag rather unexpectedly on the run up to the Lea bridge, did he not?
Or perhaps I should remind him of a contentious conversation we had last autumn at Netherfield Park with an unsolicited observation. I daresay you have never seen a painted table quite as elegant as the one Lady Lucas is showing off to her neighbours. Next, my sisters plan to learn to net purses and paint screens. Oh, but I almost forgot! They are working in vain, for those are not accomplishments at all to those who cherish stricter standards…
But no, my chance was lost when John Lucas chose that moment to saunter over, stand directly in front of me, and say, “How is my curricle, then, missy?”
“I am delighted to tell you I have not yet crashed it. But perhaps that is not what you want to hear, is it, John?”
We had known each other since our infancy, and I could not call him Mr Lucas to save my life.
He replied with a little snort. “I still do not believe you won it fairly. Why did they let females enter the drawing anyway?”
“It is likely,” I answered reasonably, “that the sole purpose of the lottery scheme was that of advertisement. I assume the company wished for as many people as possible to be aware of the Zephyr. Since, unfortunately, women make up half the empire, we were included. Dastardly provision, I know, for you have said yourself it was a stupid oversight, and I robbed a worthy winner of his chance.”
He spoke gravely, clasping his hands behind his back in a poor imitation of Mr Darcy who stood immobile beside me. “I am sure they did not expect a woman to enter the drawing. What is more, had a female been bold enough to try for it, they would have expected her to give the thing to her brother in the unlikely event she actually won it.”
“I would have done just that if I had a brother,” I replied sweetly, smiling up into his mulish face. He was still a mere boy but in a man’s body, and claiming he was practically my cousin, he had begged me to relinquish the thing to him for many weeks after I won it .
“I draw comfort,” he huffed, “from the fact that when you marry, your husband will surely make you give it up.”
“Yet another reason to dread the prospect of marriage,” I said with a merry chuckle. “But if I wed an ogre, which seems likely enough, and if he sells my horses and forbids me to whip, then I shall certainly give my little curricle to you, John. We are practically cousins, after all.”
He stiffened at having his words so casually thrown back at him. “I am sure I do not want it now after you have rattled it around the county. Besides, I am planning to buy my own.”
“Are you? But how excellent for you! Will you buy a Zephyr?”
He scoffed at this. “Bah. The thing is made with matchsticks and glue from what I can gather, hung like a gig calling itself a curricle. Your precious winnings will end in the rubbish pile by Christmas if I know anything. Besides, I am considering a high-perch from Hooper and Company.”
“Are you indeed? That will be a sporting triumph for you. Everyone in the county would have to shade their eyes to stare up at you. I am happy for you, John. Shall we race, do you think?”
“I would love to see you try to race me,” he said grandly before his attention was drawn by a hearty guffaw from the other side of the room where his father was speaking to Mr Bingley and Uncle Philips.
When my tormentor stepped away, I sat with a smile playing upon my lips, for I was fondling the memories brought up by his teasing. What an uproar my winning the Zephyr had caused! But just as I was imagining dashing past the young sprig of Lucas Lodge on the false flat leading up to the Lea bridge, I was pulled roughly out of my little dream.
“I had been wondering when you had learnt to whip. ”
He spoke in a low grumble to match his frown.
“Had you? I wonder that you have thought of me at all, Mr Darcy.”
I was watching with delight as his jaw hardened when he suddenly turned upon me. “When last I was here, you were frightened of horses and did not even ride. You can be nothing other than a novice! What were you thinking to be careering around the countryside at such speed?”
“Thinking!” I exclaimed. “My word, who thinks when they are racing a curricle? I was merely trying to out-pace someone unknown to me who seemed in hot pursuit. How could I have known you were not a dangerous criminal?”
“Oh, I see. There are so many highwaymen who drive a curricle and matched pair,” he said drily.
“Well,” I said with a sniff, “anything is possible. It is not uncommon for a criminal to steal , is it? Besides, I did not precisely turn around to take your likeness for a portrait. I saw someone careering , as you say, towards me, and I used a bend in the road and a cut through the woods to evade capture.” I paused to look appraisingly at him. “How did you make up so much ground, I wonder? By rights I should have beaten you to the fork in the road.”
“I thought the horses pulling the curricle in front of me were out of control and perhaps whoever was driving it,” he said, aiming a stabbing look down upon me, “had lost hold of the reins.”
“Oh, in that case, I owe you an apology, sir. I did not know you were on a mission of rescue. If I had known that , I would have done a better job of pretending distress, so you could have come to my aid. You must have been quite put out with me when I pulled around you on that rise up to the bridge. ”
“You will never do so again, for now that I know what is ahead on that route, I shall plan my strategy accordingly.”
“Are we to race through Lindbury Wood again?” I asked in an accent of exasperating delight. “I am in alt! Perhaps this time?—”
“There will be no next time,” he declared. “I refuse to be party to you breaking your neck.”
“Oh, very well,” I said with a sigh of dejection.
In truth, I enjoyed little more than teasing Mr Darcy into speaking candidly of his monumental disapproval of me. But he had had enough apparently, for he unclasped his hands and stalked away from me as if for good.
A tormenting fate would plague him, however, for Lady Lucas had stupidly placed him next to me at dinner. Typically, I sat in the hinterlands of the dinner table at Lucas Lodge, but without Jane, I was now given the place at the table usually reserved for Miss Bennet of Longbourn , and I took advantage of my placement over the course of the next hour by throwing polite enquiries at Mr Darcy’s stoic profile.
“How is Miss Darcy faring, sir? Is she still in town or at Pemberley?” and a bit later, “What is the weather in Derbyshire in summer?” followed closely with, “What plays have you seen during the Season? Did the opera produce Figaro again? I had heard they might do Ophelia instead.”
This was the sort of chatter Mr Darcy seemed to despise, and he replied in clipped tones and abbreviated sentences meant to depress my aspirations for a true conversation. Miss Bingley, sitting at his other elbow, vied meticulously for every other opportunity to question him, thus we took turns peppering him with our inane enquiries.
Mr Darcy, his head swivelling from left to right as though he were in the audience of one of the Regent’s tennis tournaments, struggled to find a pause in which to put the next bite of food into his mouth.
Eventually, I tired of plaguing him. Besides, Miss Bingley was better at it, and I left her to it entirely when she began to question him about his rose garden.
“Are you growing any new varietal roses at Pemberley this year, sir?” she asked sweetly.
“I am sure we are.”
“How divine! I have heard there is a new white rose that is extraordinarily fragrant. I believe it is called the Lily of Avalon . Perhaps you should look into it.”
“Perhaps,” he said with a faint sigh of resignation, “although I believe my mother planted that rose in our garden a decade ago.”
As amusing as this forced exchange had been, I turned to speak to Mr Graves, the curate, and heard no more from my right side until the main course was removed and replaced with the cheese board.
“Did you swallow a chicken bone?” Mr Darcy asked me in a low aside, pulling me away from attending to the conversation at the far end of the table.
“What?”
“You became rather silent. Should I be concerned?”
“Oh, I thought perhaps I should allow you to eat.”
He grunted before changing the subject. “When next will you be terrorising Hertfordshire in your curricle made of matchsticks and glue?”
I turned to look directly into the gentleman’s eyes out of flat curiosity. “I go whenever I can, sir. Why? Did you wish to be forewarned?”
Something amazing then occurred, for Mr Darcy’s lips almost curved into a faint smile. “Something like that,” he said.